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Re-posting this here mostly just to keep a record of it. Forum posts have a way of disappearing over time.

Topic: The purpose of this thread is to discuss common practices and strategies when utilizing multiple Xbox 360 systems within the same household.

Relevant Data: I currently own three Xbox 360 units. Until now, my living situation has not allowed all the units to be set up at the same time. With a recent move, I am now able to have one console in the living room, one in the bedroom, and one set up and my six year old nephew's house so we can play Lego Star Wars and the like together. I now have the ability to play in the living room while the wife is sleeping, or move to the bedroom if she wants to use that room. I now find the need to have:

A: My profile available at any of the three locations.

B: My game saves available at any of the three locations.

C: Access to DRM for my downloaded games and content at any of the three locations.

Current Plan of Action: My current plan to overcome these three challenges is to utilize Microsoft's new Cloud Save option for games I may want to travel with. I will then move my profile over to a USB drive that can easily travel with me, eliminating the need for cumbersome profile recoveries. I plan to shift my DRM to my primary Xbox in the living room, and rely on Xbox live connectivity to allow me access to my content DRM elsewhere.

Concerns: I have major concerns with all three aspects of this plan:

A: I am aware that I can recover my Gamertag, but, being incredibly paranoid about information loss and not entirely trusting of the cloud, the thought of my profile on an easily lost or corrupted USB drive worries me. Can I back up the contents of my flashdrive to my computer for safe keeping, or will this violate the files and flag me as some kind of modder worthy of banning?

B: I have seen the cloud save option, but have yet to try it. The only option seems to be to "Move" your save to cloud save, not copy. Does this actually move your save without leaving a local copy, and, if so, does this mean that internet or xbox live outages will prevent me from loading my game? In short, is it possible to copy a save to the cloud while maintaining a local copy? The same goes for moving a save to usb.

C: You are only able to move you DRM once per year, and I have held off on transferring it for just that reason. If I load my profile on one of the other Xboxes, will I be able to redownload my content to that unit, regardless of where my DRM is linked? Even if the content is only available while my Gamertag is active and signed in to Xbox live, will I be able to download my content again on whatever Xbox I am on? I would hate to find that I try to go play in the bedroom and I don't have access to my DLC.

Appeal: In this thread, I am looking for tips, tricks, strategies, and personal experiences of content and profile management across multiple Xbox systems. I know that the staff at Rooster Teeth deal with this problem on a daily basis and have made several references to it on the podcast. If a staff member would like to offer some advice on how this can be accomplished, the help would be greatly appreciated.

Going Forward: I hope this sparks intelligent discussion about managing identities and DRM on the Xbox as well as on the web and in our daily lives. As our world becomes increasingly internet dependent, what strategies do you use to manage the seemingly unending string of usernames, passwords, profiles, and accounts we are now required to have?

Comments (1)

Save the profile and any data you want to be portable to a USB thumbdrive. We had 2 XBoxes setup at my place and we'd go to either one of two friends' houses sometimes. I'd keep mine and my roommates profiles at least on a 4GB drive, but I'd suggest upping to at least a 16 or even 32 if you could. Just for the extra DLC stuff you might want to have available.

I also think the XBL cloud storage is limited (not 100% sure on that though). I don't know much about their DRM stuff, I normally try and only use streamed internet services (Netflix/Hulu+/ESPN) on the XBox, but leave any media with potential DRM to my iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and PC). Mainly because my iPhone is always with me and the iPad has the potential to do the same. I'm not thrilled about DRM, but it's not impossible to live with.